Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

Using advanced tools for central repositories to have crossover sharing will help to streamline the daily work through data sharing and a knowledge base. This will significantly drive the business units’ work to be more independent and efficient.

Tools that allow access to templates and drive teamwork to provide comments and enhance the legal and business discussion; the transition from a paper-based process to electronically driven methodologies will be crucial in eliminating the human error factor.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

It is all about people. This is the first and foremost important aspect. It helps drive people and processes and achieve your goals efficiently. It relates to being friendly, easy to work with, someone to contemplate, and mostly someone to rely on and trust.

Understanding your business and the different business units’ domains is critical. In our biotech industry, where many people have a scientific background, they look for additional input beyond legal discussion.

And lastly, the ability to be detailed and highly professional is no less essential to achieving the confidence of the people working with you.

What can law firms do to improve their service to the legal department?

If you ask people, they usually will say that the role of law firms is to assist, advise and consult the legal department on issues and questions that require discussion and decisions raised by the company. However, another role of a good law firm is to support the general counsel when they need more in-depth knowledge on a particular subject. It is sometimes crucial that the law firm actively suggest support on some issues. This can be, for example, concerning more professional and complicated topics such as tax matters, securities matters, or even labour issues in a jurisdiction in which the general counsel is not operating in. To provide a professional, efficient and holistic service, a law firm should appoint a lead partner to each company, who shall be the contact point and who knows the company, its business and its needs, as well as the general counsel. In this way, that partner will be able to advise on legal matters raised by the company on the one hand and offer active support where additional aid is needed. Such support can be, for example, by referring the company to other departments in the law firm or the law firm affiliates and sending relevant mailing lists and updates.